


the evolution of the national pastime

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Series: interludes and conversations [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Feelings, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, baseball fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2010288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve <i>loves</i> baseball. He loves it and Sam is nothing if not a good friend, because lately things have no been going their way and Steve has spent a lot of time moping (although no one would call it moping, because what happens is that he goes quiet and still and stops talking about Bucky and how they’ll find him – an occurrence that the more they look, the more that Sam thinks will happen on the opposite end of never) so he bought two tickets to a home game and presented them, and Steve looked at him for a moment and smiled. There’s a lot to be said about Captain America smiling, and the chief among them is that it’s a sight for sore eyes.</p>
<p>(or: Sam takes Steve to a baseball game)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the evolution of the national pastime

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS THE FIC I SET OUT TO WRITE. I owe this fic to Atti and her SO who have been so gracious with me and also have put up with me asking really dumb questions about baseball. All the errors in detail are my own in that regard.
> 
> (also I have taken some liberties with replacing presidents for the President's race, but rest assured, if you are not a baseball fan, they are real, it does happen, and I'm told they often do dress up)

Sam is, if asked in a job interview or if tortured until he reveals his deepest self, a basketball fan. It would not have been easy, growing up in Harlem and not playing the game, and to be honest, it was a good game – fast, frantic, and easy to play when the only piece of equipment needed was a ball. 

And that doesn’t mean that he hates baseball, as much as he kind of sees it as a complicated sport with too much in the way of equipment and specialized knowledge needed. So to be honest, he doesn’t really know how he got here, when here is sitting with Steve on the train, heading towards a Nationals game.

Steve _loves_ baseball. He loves it and Sam is nothing if not a good friend, because lately things have no been going their way and Steve has spent a lot of time moping (although no one would call it moping, because what happens is that he goes quiet and still and stops talking about Bucky and how they’ll find him – an occurrence that the more they look, the more that Sam thinks will happen on the opposite end of never) so he bought two tickets to a home game and presented them, and Steve looked at him for a moment and smiled. There’s a lot to be said about Captain America smiling, and the chief among them is that it’s a sight for sore eyes.

“I haven’t been to a ball game since I woke up,” Steve says, pulling his Nats cap over his head. 

Sam is genuinely surprised at that. “Two years, and Tony Stark, hasn’t gotten you to a game?” he asks, because if he knows anything about Stark is that he has a tendency to give people expensive shit that they nominally want in hopes that they’ll either like him (Sam’s theory) or that they’ll leave him alone (Steve’s theory). 

Steve shakes his head. “Tony likes basketball,” he explains, “and I haven’t really had the opportunity. No one to go with, you know?” He looks over at the fans around them – there’s a little boy who is staring at Steve with this expression, like he’s absolutely sure he knows exactly who Steve is and maybe if he looks long enough, Captain America will look _back_. Steve spots him and looks a little confused for a moment, then waves, and the little boy waves back.

It’s cute.

Sam shakes his head. “Well, now you do.”

~~~~~~

The first thing that Steve does when they get there is stare at the gate to the park for a long, long minute. Sam is trying to get water and when he turns around he sees Steve staring, not in awe, but in something Sam has seen before, but he can’t quite pinpoint what the expression on Steve’s face is. He hands him a bottle of water and they go in.

“You take all this scanning of tickets and computerized stuff pretty well for a fossil,” Sam teases, opening his bottle and taking a drink.

Steve just looks at him. “I worked in a place where they used my biometrics to scan me in and out of the building at least four times a day,” he points out, “but people still think that the barcode scanner will make me scream about witchcraft.” He’s smiling, though, so Sam isn’t worried that he might have hit a nerve. He looks over, though, at the vendors, at the people milling around in red jerseys and hats, at the bustle of crowds heading for chili and hot dogs and jerk chicken. 

Sam knows overwhelmed when he sees it. “Come on,” he says, nodding his head. “I’ll get us a beer,” he offers, even though he knows that Steve only drinks beer to be polite, because it’s not like it does anything for him. 

“This place is nothing like what I’m used to,” Steve finally admits, once they have their beers (and Steve a bag of peanuts he has stashed, carefully, in his back pocket like a grandpa) and are drinking them and overlooking the crowd coming in, filling the stands. “Ebbets Field was a quarter of the size of this place.”

The truth is that even Sam is a little surprised. “I always thought it looked bigger on television,” he admits, and Steve laughs. “The truth is I don’t know anything about this sport outside of knowing about Jackie Robinson.”

“Even I know about Jackie Robinson,” Steve assures Sam, “I read history book or two since I got to D.C.” He takes a sip of his drink. “He played for my old team,” he adds, a little proudly, Sam thinks, and it’s the cutest thing he’s seen in a long time.

The cutest thing right up until a little girl, her skin the same exact shade as Sam’s and her hair in fluffy pigtails walks right up to Steve, looks up at him, and asks, “Are you Captain America?”

Her shirt announces her to be a member of a summer camp, and on one wrist she has a slew of rainbow colored plastic bracelets. Steve looks down at her and crouches, so they’re looking right at each other. “Yes,” he says, “can I help you?”

She frowns a bit, and looks over at Sam, who shrugs, and takes a bracelet off her wrist and puts it in Steve’s hand. “Here,” she announces, and before Steve can make her take it back (because Sam knows he will) she kisses him on the cheek and makes a break for it.

Steve looks absolutely shocked. 

“Is that he first kiss you’ve had in seventy years?” Sam asks, trying not to laugh. Captain America, he thinks, the great hero of World War Two, Medal of Honor recipient, savior of New York, just got sideswiped by a six year old girl to the point that he’s _blushing_.

“No!” Steve says, and he starts to laugh, then.

It’s a good start.

~~~~~

Steve is wearing the neon pink bracelet when they take their seats, which aren’t bad. Sam had some contacts and he promised if he helped with the Veterans salute they could get seats right above the home team dugout for cheap.

It didn’t occur to him that he was traveling with a national icon, because even though they sit with their beers, before Steve even can pull out his peanuts an official looking woman with a clipboard and a lanyard is heading down their stand. “Excuse me,” she says, and Steve clearly does not think he is talking to her.

Actually Steve has been acting sort of strange the past hour, post-kiss – like maybe he’s forgotten the national icon thing himself. So the woman clears her throat. “Excuse me, Captain Rogers?”

Steve’s head snaps up at that, and he clutches his bag of peanuts nervously, like maybe he’s done something wrong. This is getting bizarre, Sam thinks, so he looks up at the woman. Steve, who is incapable of being rude to people, just nods his head. “Can I help you?” he asks, and Sam wonders if this girl is going to kiss him too. (Honestly, he’s pretty sure that Steve has absolutely no clue what he looks like, because he does not seem to ever understand why women look at him when he walks by. Sam is straight but even he would look at Steve’s ass if he wasn’t his only friend who wasn’t an expert assassin. Or a brainwashed one.)

“I’m Marissa Ramirez, I’m with the stadium, and we wanted to offer you seats behind the catcher’s mound. In appreciation for your service.” She smiles a bit, softly, but it doesn’t seem to be effecting Steve, because Sam’s pretty sure that’s the same face he had when he was giving the speech before they blew up the Helicarriers and destroyed the Triskelion. 

It’s funny that Steve Rogers does that, causes billions of dollars of damage, and he _still_ gets an invitation to sit in the most expensive seats in the stadium. If Sam did that alone the government would be screwed, because his mama would have killed him and they wouldn’t even have the ability to find the body. As it was, despite being a grown man, Sam had to take Steve to meet his mother to get off the hook.

He thinks it must be his good old-fashioned manners because the boy has no charm whatsoever, only an aura of goodness and a ridiculously well-shaped jaw.

A jaw that, right now, is setting firmly. “Are you offering that to all the veterans at the match today?” he asks, and Sam wants to groan. Take the offer, he wants to tell Steve, but despite being Captain America an despite having his very own Smithsonian exhibit, Steve refuses to consider himself any more special or brave than anyone else who served. It’s really something that Sam thinks is probably his best quality.

But Sam has heard rumors about the quality of the seats and the food in the section behind the catcher and damn if he’s not really sorry about Steve’s morals right this moment.

Marissa seems stunned by this and she just stares for a moment before she takes a cell phone out of her pocket and calls someone, presumably higher up, and Sam watches as Steve relaxes into his seat and takes out his peanuts, opening one, as she argues with someone on the phone. “Do you want one,” he offers, and Sam takes a peanut, because well, why not. 

She’s on the phone for five or ten minutes before she pockets it and indicates for him to stand up, and come over, and an announcement is made over the Jumbotron, that any veteran with ID should please come over to the VIP section. Sam looks over at Steve, who stands up, and looks at Sam. “I hope you brought your ID,” he says, his smile crooked, like he’s just gotten away with murder.

Considering how much this is probably costing the stadium, maybe he has.

Just as they’re about to leave, though, she says, “Captain, would you throw the first pitch?”

Sam thinks, of course he won’t. Of course he’s going to offer it to some disabled kid in the audience, or who even knows at this point, but then Steve surprises him because Steve’s entire face lights up like a Christmas tree, bright and ecstatic. “Really?” he asks, and for a single second Sam sees the kid from Brooklyn who was nobody, who didn’t have anything except his best friend.

His best friend who Sam told him that he might not be able to save, and doesn’t that make him feel a little down.

She nods, with a smile now that sort of says that she sees this childlike wonder in grown men all too often, and Steve turns to Sam. “Is that okay with you?”

“This isn’t even my game,” Sam says with a laugh, holding his hands up. 

That’s how Steve ends up throwing the first pitch, clearly with a level of care that he affords only to things like cleaning his shield and talking about the past. 

The game, after it starts, finally, is. Well.

It’s a baseball game.

Steve, bless his heart, tries to explain things about pitches and swings and misses, but really he doesn’t seem really terribly sure about some things either. “These pitchers are different,” he says, after talking for about ten minutes about the pitchers mound. A veteran sitting on the opposite side of Steve, someone who served in Desert Storm, starts a conversation with him about the details that have changed, and they go on about _designated hitters_ for about twenty minutes, and Sam is totally and completely lost.

He does catch up at some point, when in a lull during the third inning, Steve says, “I still can’t believe we’re doing this at night. Bucky loved the game, but he always got annoyed at how many we had to miss because he was at work.” He squints up at the lights.

It’s the first time all day he’s brought up Bucky, and Sam knows how much it must be taking out of him to not compare everything, to not say every ten seconds what Bucky would think of this, and what Bucky would think of that. Sam is pretty sure that whatever their relationship was in 1945, that if they were both kids now, living the life they lived, that with the way Steve talks about him that they would be picketing to get married.

He wonders if Steve knows that if he tells Sam, that there won’t be any judgment. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, what Steve knows and what he thinks; he’s more private than people like to realize. 

And then it happens.

It’s the bottom of the 4th when they announce the President’s race, and Sam sits straight up in his seat. “Steve, I totally forgot to warn you,” he starts, because he had meant to, but then the mascot presidents are filing onto the field, all four of them, their enormous heads bobbling in the light breeze. Steve stares at them, perplexed. 

And stares.

And stares.

And then says, “Is that James Buchanan dressed as Captain America?”

Because the presidents, or rather, the enormous ten foot tall mascots are all dressed like the Avengers; George Washington has a red cape and a hammer, Lincoln an Iron Man mask, Roosevelt a pair of huge green fists, and well. James Buchanan, the newest president, is wearing a Captain America helmet.

People in the stands are laughing, and helpful Desert Storm vet leans over to explain about the President’s race, but Steve isn’t smiling much. He thanks him, because Steve is polite, and excuses himself.

Sam looks over at everyone in the stands enjoying themselves and he wonders really, what’s going on with Steve, so he follows and finds him pacing where he can’t see into the stadium. “Is this about disrespecting the president?”

“Sam, I wore an American flag as a costume to fight Nazis,” Steve says back. Anyone who says that Steve doesn’t have a sense of humor is full of shit, Sam thinks for a moment, because at least he’s not sensitive about the state of American presidents. But he’s not going to ask. He stands there, instead, silent for a moment.

Steve opens his mouth, and closes it again, and shakes his head. “Let’s go back,” he finally says, and Sam doesn’t ask questions. He just follows, just in time to not miss the salute to the veterans (and _Captain America_ they announce loudly, camera right on Steve) which is the entire reason Sam is here outside of trying to make Steve Rogers smile for more than a quarter of a second. 

The game ends and they’re back on the train – Steve is actually smiling now, not his bright smile that they had on display in movies at the Smithsonian, but it’s happy enough, a signed baseball in one hand because the entire team had insisted, with one of the pitchers – Sam could not remember his name at all – burbling something about how much he loved Captain America as a kid at the same time that Steve had shyly told him he had done a great job. 

They’re quiet for a long moment, fans getting off at other stops, the train getting slowly stiller even as it rocks, and finally Steve said, “All I could think about was how much Bucky would have liked it,” he admits, “the night games, the president with his name wearing my helmet, getting to sit behind the catcher, all of it,” he confesses, holding the baseball tight in one hand. 

“Being kissed by a little girl?” he asks, looking over, and Steve’s eyes crinkle at the corners.

He takes another moment. “He told me, when we got back from the war, that he would take me to Ebbets Field and he would kiss me in the back of the field, just because who would be able to say that Captain America was kissing his second in command without sounding like a crazy person?” Sam looks up, flicks his gaze over for a second, and then back down. He feels like he’s been holding his breath for the whole length of his acquaintance with Steve, and finally he can let it out. This is his worst secret, or at least that’s what Steve must think. The dirty underside of Captain America, and it’s no less brilliant than any other part of him. “I would tell him to shut up, and he would just laugh, and smile, like-“ he stops talking.

A kid wanders up. 

It’s the same kid from the train ride there. His parents are just down the train car a ways, looking exhausted and worn out, but the mom is watching. He looks up at Steve with a definite question on his face.

Steve looks down at the baseball. “Hey,” he says, and the kid puts both his hands on the baseball, and Sam knows exactly how this is going to play out. Steve is funny because he doesn’t want anything he’s given, and he’s given so much. He just wants something he can’t have, and he thinks it’s selfish, so he doesn’t talk about, he just gives everything away.

As if by some miracle, if he doesn’t have anything, he’ll get Bucky back.

Sam reaches for the ball first. “Kid, we’re not playing this game, you do not get to con Captain America out of this baseball.”

Steve makes a noise about how he doesn’t need it, but Sam fixes a look on him. “You’re keeping it,” he says firmly, and the kid makes a face like a pout and runs back to his mother. 

“You didn’t have to do that. It’s just a baseball,” Steve says, frowning a bit. 

Sam shakes his head. “It’s not your baseball to give away. What, do you think that Bucky’s just going to buy that story about you having a perfect day at baseball without any evidence?” He shakes his head. “I swear, Rogers.”

Steve’s face does something, then. It goes from sad, to a small smile, and then a huge one, glowing. Sam gets a picture, and Steve laughs and tries to take the phone from him, and Sam refuses. He saves it, careful, and slips the phone back in his pocket, getting rid of a peanut shell and a baseball ticket along the way.


End file.
